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Dell laptop brightness adjustment stuck [SOLVED]

Q. My Dell Inspiron 1520 screen brightness adjustment sometimes get stuck after I suspend/resume a few times. When I try to adjust the screen brightness by holding the Fn key and then press the up/down arrows nothing happens at all and it is really annoying as I have to reboot to get it to work again. 🙁 Can you suggest a way that I can fix it without having to reboot? –Hank Chambers

A. Yes, I have had a similar issue with my Dell Latitude E5530 and E6430. Here are the steps to fix Dell’s brightness adjustment feature without having to reboot 🙂

#1 Go into device manager and locate your display adapter

#2 Right click on the display adapter and choose ‘Disable’:

Temporarily disable the display adapter

The screen resolution will change but do not worry about that

#3 Now, re-enable your display adapter:

Enable your display adapter

#4 Voila, you should have working brightness adjustment again!

I hope this helps you Hank, please rate this article when you get the chance (1 to 5 stars) and please let me know if there is anything else I can help with 🙂

Best regards, -JD

UPDATE from Hank:

Brilliant! Five star rating because that did it on the FIRST try. Wow, thank you very much as this saves me very much time and frustration! -Hank Chambers

Hi Xylan, Thank you for your comment. I am sorry to hear that your brightness is stuck on your Dell 🙁

Have you tried using the Windows brightness adjustment setting under power settings? Here is a screenshot of the brightness setting in Windows 7 (permalink). If that doesn’t work, or if you are on a different OS just let me know and I’ll try to help via another method. 🙂

Also, as a last ditch effort you may want to go into the BIOS and try manually adjusting the brightness there.

This does not work great for dell latitude e6430. There are 2 display adaptors shown … one is “Intel HD Graphics 4000” and the other “NVidia NVS 5200M”. First tried disabling the nvidia adaptor and re-enabling it. No different at all. Then I tried disabling the Intel one. This did not just change the screen resolution. It actually disabled the screen itself. I was staring at a black blank screen for a long time before I decided to hard-reboot it into safe mode, re-enable the intel adaptor and then boot back into normal mode. Whew!

So don’t try the above suggestion if your config looks anything like mine.

Hi Gopal, Thank you for your comment and wise warning to users with NVIDIA Optimus setups (integrated Intel video + discrete Nvidia GPU). I will have to revisit this as I have one laptop with the same setup as yours and I thought I had solved this issue before! 🙁

When I’ve turned it off, the screen was black. Same case. There is a workaround (no need to reboot or use safe mode) – if you didn’t turned off the NVidia video adapter, you can just connect external monitor or TV. Then you can easily re-enable Intel.

Hi Rand, Thank you for your message. To enter safe mode, you should be able to: #1 Power off your PC (using the power button if necessary, that’s the “hard reboot” part) #2 Press the power button to turn your computer ON, immediately and repeatedly press the F8 key during the bootup process #3 Select Safe Mode from the options

Hi Rand, Thank you for your comment. Has the issue been resolved yet? Normally, if the laptop is operating correctly, you should be able to get into the BIOS or Windows safe mode by repeatedly pressing (or try just holding down) the appropriate key. I would specifically try to do this with the laptop NOT connected to an external monitor, just using the internal laptop LCD display.

Sadly didn’t work for me (Dell Inspiron 3520 on Win 8.1). Screen suddenly went black, which freaked me out, then came back on same as before. Managed to enable adapter but no change in brightness function. Getting rather frustrating, any suggestion gratefully received – thanks!

I just used this to fix my issue with my Dell not allowing me to us my fn to adjust the brightness after installing Windows 8.1. It took 30 seconds to do and worked the first time! I’m glad I found this post!

I’ve tried this, and updating the display adapter, running diagnostic tests from dell, and restarting my computer but alas no luck. still stuck on the highest brightness setting. i have a dell inspiron 15 model 5547 and the problem just recently arose today!

i have my dell inspiron 13 7000 series , window 8.1 .. its brigtness suddenly increased to max level. And now i am unable to control with F11 and F12. Did almost everything. updated latest drives Disable /enable Display adaptor.

Hi jyots, Thank you for your comment. I am sorry to hearing that you are having brightness issues on your Dell 🙁

Have you tried using the Windows brightness adjustment setting under power settings? Here is a screenshot of the brightness setting in Windows 7 (permalink). If that doesn’t work, or if you are on a different OS just let me know and I’ll try to help via another method. 🙂

Have you tried the latest Dell QuickSet utility? Since you are able to successfully change the brightness in power settings, it seems like a software update might allow you to keep those changes in effect (since it sounds like they are reverting to the wrong setting).

Thank you very much for the tip. I use Dell Inspirion 14. I had to reboot the laptop between disabling and enabling the driver. Now the problem is fixed. I appreciated your effort in sharing knowledge.

IT WORKS!!! Although be warned, your screen may go black as soon as you disable the driver. I just restarted my laptop and the screen was working ok. I then re-enabled it and all was good. Everything works once more! 🙂

Hi mmichellew, Thank you for your comment and for your question. I wish I knew a definitive answer but I assume it is a driver issue or firmware issue. If the issue becomes too annoying, you may want to try updating your laptop’s BIOS to the latest version as well as your video drivers.

I have a E6530 with Optimus GPU Switching (Intel + Nvidia). The screen also becomes permanently black when disabling the Intel adapter, until rebooting in safe mode and re-enabling the adapter. But is is possible to re-enable the screen with the keyboard : 1. Right click on Intel HD Graphics and choose “Properties”. 2. Select the tab “Driver” 3. Press letter “D” on keyboard. Click “OK” on the dialog. This will power off the screen. 4. Wait a few seconds, and press “E”. 5. The screen is power on the screen again.

Thank you. I’ve been struggling with this issue for the past year with my XPS 13 9360. But is it possible that after 3 years of people experiencing this problem it has not been addressed with a driver update? Is it specific to Dell laptops or is it something to do with Intel Graphics driver?

Wow man, you’re amazing! I just came home to find my laptop’s brightness awry, and an official reply from Microsoft told me to update the driver and restart my laptop and all that, but this is the quick and efficient way! Thanks man, I really didn’t want to wait 30 minutes for this to update! lol

J.D. is an attorney and IT professional living off the grid. He has been a tech enthusiast ever since his dad let him play with computers in the early 80s. Now jdhodges.com is where he shares tech tips. Thanks for visiting & feel free to join in the discussion by commenting :-)